Learning patience as a writer

[Not2Pervy]

I feel that I should clarify the above.

I do read back each section as I write it. I periodically read the whole thing from the beginning.

I share sections as I write them with @Djmac1031 (and vice versa) and get the benefit of his input.

I listen to 3-4K word chunks in the car commuting. I catch typos, repetition, and poor phraseology that way. When I’m at a final draft, I try to listen all the way through again.

For longer / more complex pieces, I get input from betas. So it’s not like I just throw it together.

But what I have never done is leave a final draft to marinate and come back to it in a month. If I’ve done all the above, I publish.

I also seldom rip out and rewrite. For some reason, I seem able to get a high percentage of what I want first go. Maybe 80-85%.

I do on occasion go back and revise earlier sections to fit better with later. But that’s before I get to a final draft.

Emily

In the spirit of clarification and further reflection I’m kind of reassured to learn most people’s practice has been similar to mine: do some editing and refining while you write, but basically as soon as you feel like it’s done, then submit the thing.

But I also studied enough literature in college to feel a little guilty about that, as if some kind of higher art can be achieved when you take the time to finely craft sentence structure, and imagery, and even add in symbolism and such. I once thought I wanted to be that kind of writer, but I’m not sure I have the patience for it.

I’m also not sure the smutty little fantasies I write here really lend themselves to that. I’m sure that’s not what most readers are looking for. But I can’t completely quiet the still small voice in my head that aspires to create something with a little bit of literary merit, “whatever that is.” Call it the delusions of a Liberal Arts major.

 

[Not2Pervy]

To sum up, the voice in one ear says, “just tell the story. Try to entertain people (and maybe help them get off).” While the voice in the other says, “but what if you could do more?”

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The egos have spoken. I've been told.

 

[ronde]

In the spirit of clarification and further reflection I’m kind of reassured to learn most people’s practice has been similar to mine: do some editing and refining while you write, but basically as soon as you feel like it’s done, then submit the thing.

But I also studied enough literature in college to feel a little guilty about that, as if some kind of higher art can be achieved when you take the time to finely craft sentence structure, and imagery, and even add in symbolism and such. I once thought I wanted to be that kind of writer, but I’m not sure I have the patience for it.

I’m also not sure the smutty little fantasies I write here really lend themselves to that. I’m sure that’s not what most readers are looking for. But I can’t completely quiet the still small voice in my head that aspires to create something with a little bit of literary merit, “whatever that is.” Call it the delusions of a Liberal Arts major.

Don't fret about finely crafted sentence structure, imagery, and symbolism. The writers of fiction who actually get paid to write it violate the "rules" all the time. They get paid for what they write because of how they structure their characters and the plot of the novel. Yes, they do have to follow the basic rules of English punctuation, spelling, etc. so their work is readable, but things like you mention are an author's writing style. Some write in what a Rhetoric professor would consider correct. Many don't.

As for editing and time, it takes about two weeks for my brain to forget what I intended to write and read what I really wrote. It's just the way the human brain works. If you edit too soon, your brain will "correct" your errors and not flag them.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

If you edit too soon, your brain will "correct" your errors and not flag them.

Very very true. Excellent advice.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I agree with a lot of people here that with Lit I don't have much patience for editing. But in general, if you are going to properly edit, it really helps to put your finished draft in a drawer (figuratively as it may be) for a week or two, so when you come back you have fresher eyes.

The desire to work on it when you're stopping yourself helps build anticipation too... It burns so good

 

[MyBareTorso]

I'm still not that patient. When I'm done with a story, my inclination is to publish it ASAP and move on to another story rather than let it sit and think about it to get it just right.

I don't feel a strong need to seek perfection at Literotica because a) I see this as a good opportunity to test one's writing skills, and b) I don't see a lot of concern for perfection here.

All of the above, 100%...

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Pantsing versus plotting has absolutely nothing to do with editing.

It doesn't matter if it's pantsed, plotted, or half-and-half. Editing can only be done once something has been written. If someone can write with little to no final editing and still put out work that is just as good as anyone else's, then that means is that they are good enough to write in stone. I'm not there yet and highly doubt that I ever will be.

Plotting or pantsing is a style choice that works better for some or for another and there is no best way.

Editing or not editing is not a style choice that works for someone and not someone else. Not editing (while maintaining high quality) just means that you are naturally a God gifted writer who is just that much better skilled than most.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Not editing (while maintaining high quality) just means that you are naturally a God gifted writer who is just that much better skilled than most.

I think part of the issue is that 'editing' can mean a few different things.

I think I can not edit and maintain high quality. Am I God gifted? I won't rule it out. But to me, editing is rarely going to improve my prose. I already write slowly, and I stick to my style, so when I go back to edit a lot of the book stays as I first wrote it, in that metaphorical stone. There are passages unchanged from first draft to publication.

That said, it's impossible to write an unedited story which is just as cohesive as an edited one (unless you plot your entire story out to the paragraph before you write it, or happen to colossally fuck up as an editor). When I edit I go back to flesh out themes, ideas and symbolism which became clear to me as I wrote over the course of the first draft. I can insert foreshadowing, make imagery and metaphor more thematically consistent over the narrative; I can course correct character arcs and jumble around character beats into the format which works best. These things could simply not have been as fleshed out without an edit, because I didn't fully understand them myself until the story was finished.

I think everyone can benefit from editing, but that doesn't mean unedited stories are of lesser value. It's still possible to write quality stuff straight from our little fingies. And to a lot of people the benefits of editing aren't worth losing the magic spontaneity of their craft, which I 100% respect. There is a lot of value to a story which hasn't been edited, and sits organically as it was imagined by the author. It's the difference between musical improvisation and transcription.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I think I can not edit and maintain high quality.

But you do edit to improve the quality and quite deeply too.

When I edit I go back to flesh out themes, ideas and symbolism which became clear to me as I wrote over the course of the first draft. I can insert foreshadowing, make imagery and metaphor more thematically consistent over the narrative; I can course correct character arcs and jumble around character beats into the format which works best. These things could simply not have been as fleshed out without an edit, because I didn't fully understand them myself until the story was finished.

 

[mildlyaroused]

But you do edit to improve the quality and quite deeply too.

I do edit my larger works and I like them more post-edit, but I also become disillusioned with many of them. It really sucks to slave over a book for too long and become sick of it. I don't think an edited piece is inherently better than an unedited piece. Nobody can argue it's less cohesive, but that doesn't translate directly to quality. But yes - I stand by editing as you do, for my workflow.

 

[StillStunned]

Not a big fan of edging

Tantric publishing...

Personally, I edit/revise for plot and themes while I'm writing. As the story develops, it affects what's gone before so I go back and change it. By the time I come to the end, the story is mostly ready to go. I'll do a Read Aloud to catch typos and awkward phrasing, and then I submit it.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

It's not that I'm impatient, I just don't do much editing. Some people[and I've seen it as advice] just write wantonly their first draft, then go at it like Al Bundy trying to keep his car running. I write like it's my only draft, I don't often see the need to rewrite scenes. There's nothing on the table, so there's no need to act like it. I also know mostly what to look for, like my tendency to double space between words, or have a period and coma accidentally at the end of dialog, or putting an asterisk instead of a d-apostrophe.

I wrote and published a fan fic last night in about an hour, all it needed was three words spell checked. What I look at is; does it make sense, not; could it be written "better" (read different), although I might change something while I'm writing. I also took about two hours or so, once, to edit a whole novel. I guess I could call it basic or soft edit, just checking spelling and grammar/punctuation. I have yet to do a deep edit, that basically rewrites everything. But when I'm done, I'm done. Then I go through whatever it is before I go to publish it, in mobile view. Then it's out of sight, out of mind, I don't touch it unless it's to publish somewhere else, as it sits.

I take my time, shits not a race, I know most of the sites are gonna review it anyway, unless it's AO³ or Wattpad, so there's no need to be in a hurry. Rush and still will hafta wait, anyway.

 

[Djmac1031]

But to say, "If you want to reach the next level, you gotta spend half your time editing" isn't helpful for those writers who don't write that way.

I don't think one necessarily has to spend "half their time" editing.

I will say those who spend NO time editing are obvious.

Stream of consciousness writing is fine. But when your story is littered with long, winding, run on sentences with terrible punctuation, it shows me the author spent zero time going back and cleaning things up.

And I'm sorry but that's just lazy.

 

[Voboy]

But I also studied enough literature in college to feel a little guilty about that, as if some kind of higher art can be achieved when you take the time to finely craft sentence structure, and imagery, and even add in symbolism and such. I once thought I wanted to be that kind of writer, but I’m not sure I have the patience for it.

The guilt, as you put it, is a hurdle you can get over if you want to. In my opinion, the only reason you'd feel "guilty" about not editing is because you're subject to the same delusion @pink_silk_glove is subject to: the mistaken assumption that endless editing and re-editing is somehow "the right way to do this," such that not engaging in that editing makes you wrong somehow.

I'd recommend ditching that mindset if it's not helpful to how you want to write. Don't feel guilty about not editing. Feel guilty about publishing bad work; those two things are not necessarily the same.

I’m also not sure the smutty little fantasies I write here really lend themselves to that.

I'll push back slightly, because I don't agree that what we put out on Lit is frivolous or unimportant. It's certainly not Hemingway, but then neither is most of the rest of the literary canon. Stories here have worth and merit in and of themselves, because they're read and enjoyed.

In those terms, I think they're absolutely worthy of being excellent. What we're discussing here is "ways to get to excellent" as far as I can tell. If your way of getting there involves several editing passes, well and good: do those passes. If not? Then don't. Either way, the piece definitely has merit.

 

[mirafrida]

I've been known to have a story sitting in pending, and every day or so re-read it and find something else I want to tweak, and thus kick it to the bottom of the queue, and keep on doing that over and over for a couple of weeks. Does that count as patience?

 

[Trionyx]

As for editing and time, it takes about two weeks for my brain to forget what I intended to write and read what I really wrote. It's just the way the human brain works. If you edit too soon, your brain will "correct" your errors and not flag them.

This is why I have started using read aloud programs for editing. Even if a story has marinated for a few weeks, I still ‘read’ what I thought I wrote and not what is on the screen. That obnoxious mechanical voice reads what is there and errors are much easier to catch, at least for me.

 

[intim8]

My question for the group is, how long did it take you to learn to be patient with your stories? How long do you let them marinate in the revision process?

I don't. Not just from impatience, but because if I let it marinate, it will never be done. If a story is not right, I put it aside and move on. Soometimes I come back to it, sometimes not.

When I saw the title, I thought it was going to be about the other kind of patience, the one where you have the patience to let a scene or a story or a series play out the way it needs to go instead of rushing toward that one big scene or big event. That's been hard to learn, but it has been well worth it.

If you can nail 95% of that right off the end of your pen then I guess that I'm just out of my league and should find another 'hobby'.

I get about 80-90% of the way there on the first draft. Once in a while, 95%. One of my best received stories here *is* the first draft, with only spelling and grammar edits.

That's not a criticism of people doing it any other way, it's just a matter of the style of writing. Maybe its a talent, but there are also downsides to it. It's a tradeoff.

My writing comes out raw and straightforward, and I bet you can find flaws in the above-mentioned story. But overall, I thiink, (and commenters agree), that it has impact. Other's writing is finely crafted. The best writing is a balance of the two. However and wherever anyone finds that balance - and that is a question of style, not objective value - the end result is all that matters.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'll push back slightly, because I don't agree that what we put out on Lit is frivolous or unimportant. It's certainly not Hemingway, but then neither is most of the rest of the literary canon. Stories here have worth and merit in and of themselves, because they're read and enjoyed.

In those terms, I think they're absolutely worthy of being excellent. What we're discussing here is "ways to get to excellent" as far as I can tell. If your way of getting there involves several editing passes, well and good: do those passes. If not? Then don't. Either way, the piece definitely has merit.

This is how I feel. I'm of the "writing is writing" school, and I don't spend any time trying to figure out whether or not it goes in the "worthy" or "not-worthy" box. Even stories written purely for smut purposes can be enhanced with careful attention to writing and editing. On the other hand, if authors here want to crank them out without doing that, that's their prerogative.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's not a criticism of people doing it any other way, it's just a matter of the style of writing. Maybe its a talent, but there are also downsides to it. It's a tradeoff.

No, it is not a matter of style. It is a matter of process. Word choice and descriptions are a matter of style. Dialogue is a matter of style. Voicing of the narrative is a matter of style. These aspects will paint a certain picture on the page with certain colors, certain shadings. These are choices. Editing or not editing has nothing to do with these choices. It is simply the process. When someone reads your work, they can obviously see the choices in style. They cannot however see which parts were edited or revised or not.

Editing is not a choice. It's either a necessity or it's not. So if you can write 90% of your draft straight off the end of your pen and not have to edit it - and the quality still stands up against your contemporaries - then you are just a more talented writer.

 

[intim8]

then you are just a more talented writer.

That's the part I'm disagreeing with. It's *a* talent, just one of many that make for a "more talented writer". I'm probably lacking in others.

The example I cited is an outlier. Of course I edit, and sometimes rewrite parts. I don't usually need to do much, but I do do it. Where that plays into style is the "raw and straightforward" vs "finely crafted". The former is more more my style, and it demands less editing in the sense of rewrites and major structural changes.

I'm very, very bad at outlining a story from start to finish. I'm very bad at designing a character from scratch. I need to just write, to get in the characters' heads and in the situation, to figure out what is going on, who the characters are, and where they're headed.

Some people are very good at it. The difference shows, not in the quality necessarily, but the large scale style of the narrative and structure. Mine are less structured, some people's work is highly structured and intricate. I'd love to be able to write one of those, but I probably can't. So I have to rely on other things.

 

[MillieDynamite]

What is this word y'all keep banding about, patience? I don't got to show no patience. I don't need no patience, I don't care about no stinking patience!

Sorry, I just returned from a gold expedition in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's the part I'm disagreeing with. It's *a* talent, just one of many that make for a "more talented writer". I'm probably lacking in others.

The example I cited is an outlier. Of course I edit, and sometimes rewrite parts. I don't usually need to do much, but I do do it. Where that plays into style is the "raw and straightforward" vs "finely crafted". The former is more more my style, and it demands less editing in the sense of rewrites and major structural changes.

Just because something reads more raw or more polished, it has nothing to do with the process. If you write something in a raw style with or without much editing, or if you write something in a polished style with or without much editing, it's all the same.

You will never read something and say "wow the style is really edited." Editing is not a style choice. It's a part of the process. A piece either needs editing or it doesn't, or it needs a little or it needs a lot. If a draft requires little to no editing to reach the intended bar of quality, then it's just better written in the first place. That's straight talent.

If the first 300 word paragraph is high enough quality that it requires no edits and then the second paragraph of 300 words needs an overhaul to meet the same quality, then the first paragraph is just better written in the first place. It has nothing to do with style choices at all. If a writer continually writes stuff that requires little to no edits to maintain the quality standard, then they are just that good at writing, whether it's God-given talent or they've been writing and honing their skill so long that they've just gotten that good.

If something doesn't read back well enough, no one is going to say, "I'm going to leave it bad for the sake of style." You will edit it to make it better while maintaining the style. Editing or not is not a style choice, it's the process. If it needs to be better, you edit it. If it doesn't, you don't. If 90% of your stuff needs no editing, you're just that good.

 

[intim8]

You will never read something and say "wow the style is really edited." Editing is not a style choice.

You're hung up on the editing as the style. It's not, and I'm not saying that. I'm saying one choice of writing style - how you do the writing process as a whole - doesn't demand as much intensive editing. That process begins before you start typing.

f something doesn't read back well enough, no one is going to say, "I'm going to leave it bad for the sake of style." You will edit it to make it better

I don't. I abandon it if it is too broken. If it isn't, it doesn't need much editing.

I don't plan stories. I just start writing from a vague idea of a situation and a cardboard character or two. No plot, no ending in mind when I start. Whatever comes out *is* the story, for better or worse.

If it's worse, I dump it. If it's better, I tidy it up and put it out. My way is faster for any given story, but not for output as a whole, since a lot of my writing stays in the "maybe later" folder, often forever. You should see the crap that is in there.

Other people spend weeks or months of planning before writing one word. So they have to make sure everything fits just so, which is a more iterative process, lots of editing. But by the time they start writing, they know they're going to end up with a finished product to put out.

I don't. For every story I put out there, I have two or three that never see the light of day. So I guess you could say that that 80% on the first draft is really 30%, if you take my writing as a whole rather than any given story that you see.

Neither is objectively better. Both show up in how the story reads to the reader, because the off the cuff style reads differently than the crafted style. It's a little like the difference between sleek, modern furniture and rustic furniture. The former takes a lot of post-processing after the basic construction, the latter does not.

The amount of editing does not determine the style, the style determines the amount of editing.

If a draft requires little to no editing to reach the intended bar of quality, then it's just better written in the first place. That's straight talent.

That I can succeed doing it this way as often as one in three or four tries is a talent, I suppose. Only one of many talents that go into good writing. I play to my strengths.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I don't think one necessarily has to spend "half their time" editing.

I will say those who spend NO time editing are obvious.

Stream of consciousness writing is fine. But when your story is littered with long, winding, run on sentences with terrible punctuation, it shows me the author spent zero time going back and cleaning things up.

I know it’s frustrating reading my drafts, but you don’t need to tell everyone

And I'm sorry but that's just lazy.

What did you say, I took a nap.

Emily